History GameBreaker / Castlevania

** As demonstrated [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrv8-VW_qtU here:]]

[[folder:''Symphony of the Night'']]
''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'' was not meant to be a challenge. Specifically, Iga decided that earlier games were too difficult, so the level up feature and the extra items were put in so everyone could enjoy the game regardless of skill. Challenge gamers can avoid grinding for levels and rare drops, and deliberately not use the stuff below. For everyone else, the players who love the idea of mass carnage and annihilating the forces of darkness while they can't even touch you, Konami provided more ways to do so than you can shake a stick at:

[[folder:''Circle of the Moon'']]
* The Uranus + Thunderbird DSS combo. One use and every enemy that isn't a BossInMookClothing (or an actual boss) is just plain ''dead''. Not only is it the strongest attack in the game (besides the Pluto + Black Dog combo), it's a guaranteed hit on every enemy within a radius that extends ''beyond the screen''. As if that weren't enough by itself, you're invincible for about 5 seconds after using it, so you can even use it as a very effective defense.
* Pluto + Black Dog can be this with a bit of luck. Yes, you turn into a slow skeleton whose only attack is throwing bones -- a OneHitPointWonder one at that. So what makes it a potential game-breaker? Occasionally at random, you'll throw a huge bone. ''That does an almost-guaranteed 9999 damage.'' Turning every single enemy and boss in the game into One-Hit-Point Wonders themselves...

[[folder:''Harmony of Dissonance'']]

* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance HoD]]'' has yet another quirk that makes it piss easy: you can store up to 99 of any consumable item, as opposed to 9 for later Metroidvanias. While you could do the same in ''Symphony'', you could only use healing items when they were equipped in your hand slot (denying you the use of a secondary weapon or a shield), you had to use them during actual gameplay and each one either took around 5 seconds from using one to actually having your HP restored in case of potions or resulted in the healing food item being thrown to the floor, where you had to pick it up again to recover health with it: compare this to ''[=HoD=]'' and most of the later games, where healing items are used in the menu and take effect immediately, allowing you to tank almost any number of hits that don't kill you outright as long as you have potions to spare. With enough money on you, you can stock 99 Potions and Hi-Potions, which makes an already-easy game even easier.

[[folder:''Chronicles of Sorrow'']]
* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Aria of Sorrow]]'' has the Claimh Solais. It has the highest stats of any weapon, a long reach, swings in a nearly 180 degree arc, and has the holy element, which many of the tough enemies in the game are weak against. Even given that it's the game's InfinityPlusOneSword (albeit a remarkably easy to get hold of one), getting a hold of it makes the game insultingly easy.

* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Dawn of Sorrow]]'' has the Mandragora Soul. It simply sends a screaming mandragora out for 30 MP. The range is insane, the damage is very good for such a cheap-costing soul, and while a little grinding may be needed for it, you can get it as soon as you get into the Garden of Madness. The somewhat rarer and later Great Axe Armour Soul costs more and is only a little more powerful, but the range is massive, similar to the Red Minotaur Soul but less broken.

[[folder:''Curse of Darkness'']]
* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaCurseOfDarkness Curse of Darkness]]'' isn't too bad with regards to game-breakery in Hector's story, but playing in Trevor mode -- dear god. Spamming the Dagger subweapon crush on some bosses means you can destroy their faces without taking a single hit. It pales to the more proactive approach, that being throwing on the right elemental whip and beating down whatever poor unfortunate monster just happens to be blocking your way.

[[folder:''Portrait of Ruin'']]

* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaPortraitOfRuin Portrait of Ruin]]'' has a hilariously broken inventory glitch, where tapping the stylus at a certain place will always select a potion and allow you to use it... even if you don't even ''have'' a potion, so you can at any time use any amount of potions at will. This makes everything even more trivial, as any damage taken can always be instantly fully recovered. With proper usage of potions it's nearly impossible to die.

* In the proud tradition of ''Castlevania'' Game-Breakers, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'' included a '''storyline-sanctioned''' breaker in the form of Dominus Agony. With it active, you get massive stat boosts, but lose 66 HP per second. Combined with the Death Ring (even more massive stat boosts in exchange for becoming a OneHitPointWonder), you can drain bosses' hit points at a ridiculous rate. It can kill ''Dracula'' in about two hits!

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<<|GameBreaker|>>

** Even if you don't have the Chaos Ring, the Black Panther Soul allows you to just charge through most enemies at a high enough speed that you take no damage. And it costs all of two MP per second, making it EXTREMELY spammable.

{{Game Breaker}}s in the ''Castlevania'' series.

[[folder:Castlevania NES Trilogy]]
* The Holy Water, which damages enemies as it falls to the ground, and when it does, it explodes into a flame that freezes whatever enemies are caught in it and inflicts continuous damage. Pick up a Double or Triple Shot and watch every boss except ''Dracula'' go down in mere seconds, including [[ThatOneBoss Death]]. Not even Dracula's final form gets off unscathed, as while it won't deal any damage to him, it ''will'' freeze him, allowing you to whip away for free. It retains this game-breaking property minus the freezing in ''Castlevania III'', which runs on the same engine, but by ''Super Castlevania IV'', it was nerfed to make it a more balanced subweapon. Definitely a GameBreaker of that time.
** It actually does the same thing in [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight SotN]], but compared to the other game breakers available, it doesn't stand out.

[[folder:Symphony of the Night]]

* Richter's "Hydro Storm" is incredibly broken, allowing you to beat every boss except [[ThatOneBoss Galamoth]] with no real effort.

----> '''Dracula:''' "Are you seriously gonna [[{{Whoring}} spam that same move over and over]]?"
** For Galamoth, he has the dagger item crash, aimed at the head from the upper platform.

* Maria on the Saturn port. You can beat the whole game and every boss without taking any damage and in record time if you don't mind abusing her invincibility spell. Even without that spell, she still kills every boss in seconds, probably a minute for Galamoth. Only a broken Alucard beats her in a speed kill against Galamoth and a few other bosses.

[[folder:Circle of the Moon]]

* Pluto + Black Dog can be this with a bit of luck. Yes, you turn into a slow skeleton whose only attack is throwing bones -- a OneHitPointWonder one at that. So what makes it a potential game-breaker? Occasionally at random, you'll throw a huge bone. ''That does an almost-guaranteed 9999 damage.'' Turning every single enemy and boss in the game into {{One Hit Point Wonder}}s themselves...

[[folder:Harmony of Dissonance]]
* The Bolt + Bible combo summons a pair of ''{{VideoGame/Gradius}}''-style [[ShoutOut shields]] to float in front of Juste. On top of blocking projectile shots, it does over 140 damage per hit, and each shield can take about 10 hits.

* [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance HoD]] has yet another quirk that makes it piss easy: you can store up to 99 of any consumable item, as opposed to 9 for later Metroidvanias. While you could do the same in Symphony, you could only use healing items when they were equipped in your hand slot (denying you the use of a secondary weapon or a shield), you had to use them during actual gameplay and each one either took around 5 seconds from using one to actually having your HP restored in case of potions or resulted in the healing food item being thrown to the floor, where you had to pick it up again to recover health with it: compare this to [=HoD=] and most of the later games, where healing items are used in the menu and take effect immediately, allowing you to tank almost any number of hits that don't kill you outright as long as you have potions to spare. With enough money on you, you can stock 99 Potions and Hi-Potions, which makes an already-easy game even easier.

[[folder:Chronicles of Sorrow]]

** And the Valkyrie soul is just as bad, delivering a hideous strike across a huge area for a very reasonable MP cost, and coming much earlier in the game than the Claimh Solais does.

** The Red Minotaur soul. It's a costly 150 MP attack, but it creates a '''massive''' axe that swing completely around you, obliterating practically everything. Added to this is the fact that standing with your back facing the enemy makes the soul hit TWICE (once when it arcs back to swing, the second when the swing makes contact)leading to over 2000 damage in one attack. One can destroy bosses without even replenishing their MP.
** The Killer Mantle soul, which has the property of swapping HP and MP, can one hit kill many enemies, and costs a mere pittance in MP. Even against enemies its stat-swapping property doesn't affect, the Killer Mantle inflicts solid damage and ''has no attribute.'' Even enemies such as Final Guards (who have a resistance to ''all'' attributes) still take hefty damage from the Killer Mantle.
*** Even better, once you get the Mantle soul, you can use it to do some disgustingly quick power leveling [[PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling in a hallway in the Arena]] full of Mantles, Red Minotaurs, and Werejaguars, since the Mantle soul will one-shot the otherwise fairly difficult to kill Red Minotaurs. It's easily possible to gain dozens of levels within an hour or two.
** The Final Guard soul itself is phenomenal once acquired. It seems AwesomeButImpractical at first glance; using it completely stops Soma in place, he can't do anything while it's active, it can only be used on the ground, and it has a very high MP cost over time. However, there is ''no'' startup or cooldown on it in ''Aria of Sorrow'' - however long you hold the button is however long it remains active. Furthermore, blocking an attack with it gives Soma a downright gratuitous amount of invinciblity frames - frames that persist even if he drops his guard immediately after blocking an attack. This soul effectively allows Soma to nullify almost every attack in the entire game by simply tapping the button for a split second to throw up a shield just before an attack lands, and then drop it as soon as the attack is blocked with all the time in the world to retaliate or get into a better position.

** The Giant Bat soul from ''Aria of Sorrow'' seems like your usual bat transformation ability, providing flight and allowing Soma to get into small spaces (and being necessary to both advancement and getting the best ending). However, its true power lies not in flight, but taking advantage of its smaller hitbox to push up against walls and then exploiting collision detection to clip ''into'' walls, forcing room transitions to occur where they normally can't and sending Soma to completely different sections of the castle. A very basic "bat zip" allows you to start in the Arena and warp directly to the Top Floor in an instant - with more advanced zips going from there to the Forbidden Area to grab the above-mentioned Claimh Solais, and then from ''there'' to the ''[[TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Chaotic Realm.]]'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdMhGQGbydc&t=21m Behold]].
** Even if you don't have the Chaos Ring, the Black Panther soul allows you to just charge through most enemies at a high enough speed that you take no damage. And it costs all of two MP per second, making it EXTREMELY spammable.
*** Except that it's obtainable right at the end, and only if you gain access to the "post-game".
** Lightning Doll soul. Has incredible reach, slightly less costly than Valkyrie, deals multiple hits with high power, and you can get it as soon as you have access to the Clock Tower.
** The Positron Rifle from the Boss Rush mode deserves mention. It hits nearly as hard as the Solais and it multi-hits enemies. It also has the longest range of any basic weapon short of the handguns, and combined with the Succubus soul, you can decimate any grounded or large enemy without taking a single hit and heal a lot of HP.
* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Dawn of Sorrow]]'' has the Mandragora soul. It simply sends a screaming mandragora out for 30 MP. The range is insane, the damage is very good for such a cheap costing soul, and while a little grinding may be needed for it, you can get it as soon as you get into the Garden of Madness. The somewhat rarer and later Great Axe Armour soul costs more and is only a little more powerful, but the range is massive, similar to the Red Minotaur soul but less broken.
** There's also the Devil soul, which gives you a huge Strength stat boost in exchange for doing 10 HP of damage each second. The Devil soul is also very easy to get, appearing fairly early in the game. Using it in combination with the Valmanway (see "Crissaegrim" under ''Symphony'', because being broken in just one game apparently wasn't enough), it can beat the game's Boss Rush mode in just over 4 minutes (taking into account the long waiting times to gather the healing orb after every battle).
** The Medusa Soul+jumpkick combo: basically, in [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Dawn of Sorrow]], your jumpkicks do more damage the longer you fall before connecting with an enemy, which is normally only useful against Gergoth, since his boss arena is the only one with a long vertical drop. But since the game only counts airtime and not the distance you cover before connecting with an enemy, you can easily use the Medusa soul to freeze yourself in midair mid-kick and do ridiculous amounts of damage to anything below you when you let go. There were several bosses who ate an extremely, extremely damaging boot to the top of the skull.

[[folder:Curse of Darkness]]
* ''Curse of Darkness'' isn't too bad with regards to game-breakery in Hector's story, but playing in Trevor mode -- dear god. Spamming the Dagger subweapon crush on some bosses means you can destroy their faces without taking a single hit. It pales to the more proactive approach, that being throwing on the right elemental whip and beating down whatever poor unfortunate monster just happens to be blocking your way.

** Unlike The End, Corpsey ''is'' a GameBreaker in his own right. Imagine a rotating machine gun turret that blows any enemy and some bosses off their feet, interrupting their attacks. Now imagine that turret being ''invulnerable.'' Said turret is also [[StoneWall insanely durable and agile when it has a hit box]], has low mp cost for attacks, and [[DiscOneNuke can be obtained as soon as you get the battle-type ID]]

[[folder:Portrait of Ruin]]

* The ''1000 Blades'' Dual Crash is probably the worst example, though, because you get it so early in the game. It's not ''actually'' one thousand blades, just 48 (or 51 if your partner is on-screen), but even that will kill pretty much anything in a few strikes, and since each stuns separately, the enemy is quite screwed. The high hit count also makes it perfect against Final Guard, a BossInMookClothing who has 50 HP... but with a DEF so high that it takes only 1 HP of damage per hit from ''everything''.
* The Ancient Armor makes Level 1 runs trivial. It turns you into a [[OneHitPointWonder Ten Hit Point Wonder]], which doesn't seem like a very good deal until you realize that ten hits is '''far''' more than bosses like Dracula, Death, or [[ThatOneBoss Whip's Memory]] would take to kill you in a fair fight.

* Portrait of Ruin has a hilariously broken inventory glitch, where tapping the stylus at a certain place will always select a potion and allow you to use it... even if you don't even ''have'' a potion, so you can at any time use any amount of potions at will. This makes everything even more trivial, as any damage taken can always be instantly fully recovered. With proper usage of potions it's nearly impossible to die.

[[folder:Order of Ecclesia]]
* In the proud tradition of ''Franchise/{{Castlevania}}'' {{Game Breaker}}s, ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaOrderOfEcclesia'' included a '''storyline-sanctioned''' breaker in the form of Dominus Agony. With it active, you get massive stat boosts, but lose 66 HP per second. Combined with the Death Ring (even more massive stat boosts in exchange for becoming a OneHitPointWonder), you can drain bosses' hit points at a ridiculous rate. It can kill ''Dracula'' in about two hits!

** The Arma Custos glyph (also a mandatory acquisition) increases Shanoa's STR as her health gets lower. Combine with all of the above (in place of Dominus Agony) and a Judgment Ring (increases damage dealt by combo attacks) in place of the Death Ring, and Shanoa is still breaking the faces of bosses and mooks alike before they know what's happening.

[[folder:Harmony of Despair]]
* The Valmanway. Just... the Valmanway. Remember the Crissaegrim from [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight SOTN]]? The Valmanway is the very same weapon, but weaker. However, it slashes 4 times per second, making 14 damage into 56 damage. With stat-increasing items it can deal a maximum of 35+ damage per hit. This makes it a staple for Somas and Alucards on Hard mode. Needless to say, a lot of people who believe the game is meant to be experienced "fairly" abhor the existence of this sword.

* There is a glitch in Chapter 10 involving Soma's Puppet Master soul which allows you to completely bypass 3 of the 6 minibosses and go straight through the lift to the Clock Tower into Dracula's Tower, which is extremely handy considering the stage is a mostly faithful reproduction of the entire VideoGame/CastlevaniaI and is thus a MarathonLevel with many extremely useful items you can get from killing R. The Count repeatedly.
** Soma's Yorick soul also lets you skip sections of some stages. It can be used in Chapters 3 and 4 to get to the bosses very quickly.

[[folder:Lords of Shadow]]

** ...the extremely broken grapple move. Gabriel is invincible while using it, it can be performed immediately on any low-level enemy, and is an instant kill as long as the QTE is performed correctly. There's really no reason aside from boredom for the player not to grapple every enemy, and with some annoying enemies like Mandragoras and Gremlins, it is literally the best way of dealing with them. Later on it gets even more broken when Gabriel acquires the ability to grapple at a distance. Fortunately, the developers must have noticed this as the grapple was nerfed in the ''Reverie'' DLC.
* In the sequel most of the first game's more degenerate nonsense was nerfed, but Exploding Quake (the shadow magic companion to Holy Cross which nobody used because it wasn't as broken as Holy Cross) was not touched, and the Flame Claws power can easily deal with just about any non-boss enemy, doing around 266 damage per hit across a huge arc at full Mastery. Exploding Earthquake, as it's now called, does have the drawback of tending to attack enemies that are far away before nearer ones, but it is devastating against slow-moving or single enemies.

** The Ensnared Demon powerup is also broken; it puts Dracula in the same infinite-magic state as during the previous game's Satan battle (the bars decrease with use but refill almost instantly). Combined with Flame Claws or Exploding Earthquake it can absolutely wreck a boss.
** ''Mist Form.'' Acquired partway through the boss battle through Carmilla, the game quickly educates you on both using it to pass through certain gates as well as breaking out of certain attacks. Not only does it allow you to escape some QTE situations like the spit of a Satan's Soldier or a Heavy Brotherhood Knight's bear hug, almost any action you take can be cancelled into Mist Form - which, unlike your dodge move, gives you invincibility frames against almost everything the moment you press the button, and you can act immediately once your invincibility ends. However, the real kicker is the set of magic attacks associated with the Mist Form; the Chaos version breaks the guard of any blocking enemy in one hit (whereas even dedicated block-breaking attacks such as Sustained Whip and its variants require several hits before they become capable of breaking guards), the Void version ''instantly'' freezes any enemy in your way no matter how long it would take to freeze them otherwise, leaving them helpless to a devastating followup as soon as you untransform, and ''both'' moves are an InvulnerableAttack. While some opponents can use attacks that will hit Dracula out of Mist Form, just about all of these attacks are extremely telegraphed and/or easy to avoid with a simple jump or dodge.

* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaJudgment'' has Grant from VideoGame/CastlevaniaIIIDraculasCurse: While he's something of a FragileSpeedster, his power lies in his full charge A attack where he throws a FlechetteStorm that can do up to 64 hits for little over an ultimate in damage; paired with the fact that his non-charged knives let him play a game of keep-away, he's a nightmare to deal with.
** In the same game, Aeon's clock-sword charges constantly during the battle, and has three levels of charge. The first charge is blue, and allows him to fire a [[WaveMotionGun huge laser beam]] that rotates quickly and does a lot of damage. The second level is green, and, while it does less damage than the laser, it comes out faster and also covers a wide area around Aeon, making it perfect to keep the enemy away or punish a mistake. Lastly, and most broken of all, the final charge is gold. ''[[TimeStandsStill It allows him to completely stop time for a while.]]'' So Aeon can do anything he wants to his opponent, ''including'' his SpecialAttack, which, [[AwesomeButImpractical while capable of hitting the enemy in any state (hurt, downed jumping, rolling, guarding, etc), you would normally never, ever use it (despite how cool it is) because it's the only special that requires the character to stand still for a long time while he charges his attack.]] But the Time Stop lasts long enough for Aeon to finish his charge and use his special, which of course deals at least half the lifebar in damage. Given the length of time required to charge the weapon to gold, at this point the opponent probably has less than that. In short, if Aeon manages to get his Gold charge, don't EVER give him even the smallest opportunity to use his Time Stop, because if you do, '''''you're fucked.'''''

''VideoGame/CastlevaniaSymphonyOfTheNight'' was not meant to be a challenge. Most people trying to play the game and actually challenge themselves first have to set up a mental checklist of what they're ''not'' going to do. For everyone else, the players who love the idea of mass carnage and annihilating the forces of darkness while they can't even touch you, Konami provided more ways to do so than you can shake a stick at:

** For extra fun, use the 99 LCK code, and keep Death from taking your stuff. While the Alucard Shield is available fairly late in the game normally, the Shield Rod is available very early. If your shield doesn't get stolen, you get to abuse it on most of the bosses instead of just the last few.

** There's also an easy trick to getting a powerful fist weapon, the Jewel Knuckles, much earlier than you're supposed to, which dovetails into ''another'' trick that uses them to get yourself to a preposterously high level for that part of the game by repeatedly beating up a defenseless Spike Ball.

** Finally, there's Duplicator + Power of Sire/Pentagram/Bat Pentagram. You can only buy one after you've cleared the game and you'll have a hard time gathering up enough cash for it unless you use the GoodBadBug to amusingly first duplicate your sellable jewels, but once you get one and equip it, the Duplicator gives you an infinite supply of any usable item even if you only had one of it in your inventory, which in case of those 3 items means you can hit everything on the screen instantly for tons of damage. Equipping it does cause a large drop in your stats to try and even things out, but that little stipulation can be easily removed with:

** The Ring of Varda. The Ring (yes, [[Literature/LordOfTheRings that one]]) is an accessory granting stat boosts so disgustingly gigantic that the game flatly refuses to drop one at all unless there's already a cleared save game file on your memory card. And yes, you can equip two of them.

* [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance HoD]] has yet another quirk that makes it piss easy: you can store up to 99 of any consumable item, as opposed to 9 for later Metroidvanias. While you could do the same in Symphony, you could only use healing items when they were equipped in your hand slot (denying you the use of a secondary weapon or a shield), you had to use them during actual gameplay and each one either took around 5 seconds from using one to actually having your HP restored in case of potions or resulted in the healing food item being thrown to the floor, where you had to pick it up again to recover health with it: compare this to [=HoD=] and most of the later games, where healing items are used in the menu and take effect immediately, allowing you to tank almost any number of hits that don't kill you outright as long as you have potions to spare. With enough money on you, you can stock 99 Potions and Hi-Potions, which makes an already-easy game even easier. The developers surely noticed, because subsequent games cap you to only 9 of each item.

* [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance HoD]] has yet another quirk that makes it piss easy: you can store up to 99 of any consumable item, as opposed to 9 for later Metroidvanias. While you could do the same in Symphony, you could only use healing items when they were equipped in your hand slot (denying you the use of a secondary weapon or a shield), you had to use them during actual gameplay and each one either took around 5 seconds from using one to actually having your HP restored in case of potions or resulted in the healing food item being thrown to the floor, where you had to pick it up again to recover health with it: compare this to [=HoD=] and most of the later games, where healing items are used in the menu and take effect immediately, allowing you to tank almost any number of hits that don't kill you outright as long as you have potions to spare. With enough money on you, you can stock 99 Potions and Hi-Potions, which makes an already-easy game even easier.

*** Added to this is the fact that standing with your back facing the enemy makes the soul hit TWICE (once when it arcs back to swing, the second when the swing makes contact). For a hefty 150MP, you can still do over 2000 damage in one attack. One can destroy bosses without even replenishing their MP.

** The Final Guard soul itself is phenomenal once acquired. HuIt seems AwesomeButImpractical at first glance; using it completely stops Soma in place, he can't do anything while it's active, it can only be used on the ground, and it has a very high MP cost over time. However, there is ''no'' startup or cooldown on it in ''Aria of Sorrow'' - however long you hold the button is however long it remains active. Furthermore, blocking an attack with it gives Soma a downright gratuitous amount of invinciblity frames - frames that persist even if he drops his guard immediately after blocking an attack. This soul effectively allows Soma to nullify almost every attack in the entire game by simply tapping the button for a split second to throw up a shield just before an attack lands, and then drop it as soon as the attack is blocked with all the time in the world to retaliate or get into a better position.

*** This qualifies more as a Disc One Nuke as once you obtain the Bolt Book, you'll want to switch to the Bible as your endgame source of damage as by then the damage of the Wind/Cross combo will fail to keep up.

** The Final Guard soul itself is phenomenal once acquired. It seems AwesomeButImpractical at first glance; using it completely stops Soma in place, he can't do anything while it's active, it can only be used on the ground, and it has a very high MP cost over time. However, there is ''no'' startup or cooldown on it in ''Aria of Sorrow'' - however long you hold the button is however long it remains active. Furthermore, blocking an attack with it gives Soma a downright gratuitous amount of invinciblity frames - frames that persist even if he drops his guard immediately after blocking an attack. This soul effectively allows Soma to nullify almost every attack in the entire game by simply tapping the button for a split second to throw up a shield just before an attack lands, and then drop it as soon as the attack is blocked with all the time in the world to retaliate or get into a better position.

* Above all else is the Crushing Stone upgrade. When used in conjunction with the Bible and Wind combo can actually cause massive damage every frame if you're close enough to the enemy you're attacking. This combo can actually work with anything that allows you to whip while the ability is in effect. Including the Bible/Bolt and Wind/Cross attacks, however, the Bible/Wind combo is time based, allowing you to get in more hits with the Crushing Stone, conserving MP.

** This qualifies more as a Disc One Nuke as once you obtain the Bolt Book, you'll want to switch to the Bible as your endgame source of damage as by then the damage of the Wind/Cross combo will fail to keep up.

* Above all else is the Crushing Stone upgrade. When used in conjunction with the Bible and Wind combo can actually cause massive damage every frame if you're close enough to the enemy you're attacking. This combo can actually work with anything that allows you to whip while the ability is in effect. Including the Bible/Bolt and Wind/Cross attacks, however, the Bible/Wind combo is time based, allowing you to get in more hits with the Crushing Stone.

** This qualifies more as a [[DiscOneNuke]] as once you obtain the Bolt Book, you'll want to switch to the Bible as your endgame source of damage as by then the damage of the Wind/Cross combo will fail to keep up.

* The Stellar Sword's special move HITS EVERY ENEMY ON THE SCREEN. As in, Jonathan creates shadow clones to teleport and slash at each enemy ''simultaneously''. Also, it has the Holy element, and it's got a good amount of power. But would you expect any less from [[VideoGame/CastlevaniaHarmonyOfDissonance Maxim's]] preferred weapon?

** Poison Cloud makes boss fights ridiculously easy, because by the time you get it, you have enough magic power to stay in mist form long enough to deal massive damage.
*** At least, it ''would'', if acquiring it didn't require you to first kill [[BonusBoss Galamoth]]. The final boss is actually immune to it, as well.

* The Ring of Varda. The Ring (yes, [[Literature/LordOfTheRings that one]]) is an accessory granting stat boosts so disgustingly gigantic that the game flatly refuses to drop one at all unless there's already a cleared save game file on your memory card. And yes, you can equip two of them.

* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow'' has the Holy Cross ability, Ultimate Light, and the Holy Water. The first stunlocks all enemies in a 90-degree arc in front of Gabriel, inflicting ridiculous damage and actually increasing experience drops from certain enemies. Ultimate Light has Gabriel whirl around endlessly, inflicting even more damage while also healing for the damage inflicted. Either attack makes the final battle with Satan (where Gabriel has infinite magic) a complete joke. The Holy Water is only a little less broken since it instantly puts very tough enemies like vampires and Creeping Coffins into their stun state so they can be the subject of...
** ...the extremely broken grapple move. Gabriel is invincible while using it, it can be performed immediately on any low-level enemy, and is an instant kill as long as the QTE is performed correctly. There's really no reason aside from boredom for the player not to grapple every enemy, and with some annoying enemies like Mandragoras and Gremlins, it is literally the best way of dealing with them. Later on it gets even more broken when Gabriel acquires the ability to grapple at a distance.
* In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow2'' most of the first game's more degenerate nonsense was nerfed, but Exploding Quake (the dark magic companion to Holy Cross which nobody used because it wasn't as broken as Holy Cross) was not touched, and the Flame Claws power can easily deal with just about any non-boss enemy, doing around 266 damage per hit across a huge arc at full Mastery. Exploding Earthquake, as it's now called, does have the drawback of tending to attack enemies that are far away before nearer ones, but it is devastating against slow-moving or single enemies.
** On the Void Sword's side, the Whirlwind move. Comes out fast, ignores the "do virtually no damage" theme of most Void Sword attacks with similar per-hit power to Exploding Earthquake, deals multiple hits that stagger large enemies and juggle small ones, costs very little magic, and since it's a Void Sword attack it also heals Dracula. A decently-aimed Whirlwind can restore Dracula's entire health bar.
** Stolas' Clock puts enemies into an extreme stun state which grants additional XP and becomes very broken combined with certain Chaos Claw attacks, particularly Fire Cover and Furious Claw. Since Chaos Claw attacks cannot be interrupted by the enemy blocking, all they can do is take the hits. It lasts for 30 seconds, and with the aforementioned powers it is possible to get thousands of experience from a single group of enemies; the only drawback is it does not work on bosses (it ignores its own timer and only lasts a few hits) or, for some reason, Harpies.
** The Ensnared Demon powerup is also broken; it puts Dracula in the same infinite-magic state as during the previous game's Satan battle (the bars decrease with use but refill almost instantly). Combined with Flame Claws or Exploding Earthquake it can absolutely wreck a boss.
** ''Mist Form.'' Acquired partway through the boss battle through Carmilla, the game quickly educates you on both using it to pass through certain gates as well as breaking out of certain attacks. Not only does it allow you to escape some QTE situations like the spit of a Satan's Soldier or a Heavy Brotherhood Knight's bear hug, almost any action you take can be cancelled into Mist Form - which, unlike your dodge move, gives you invincibility frames against almost everything the moment you press the button, and you can act immediately once your invincibility ends. However, the real kicker is the set of magic attacks associated with the Mist Form; the Chaos version breaks the guard of any blocking enemy in one hit (whereas even dedicated block-breaking attacks such as Sustained Whip and its variants require several hits before they become capable of breaking guards), the Void version ''instantly'' freezes any enemy in your way no matter how long it would take to freeze them otherwise, leaving them helpless to a devastating followup as soon as you untransform, and ''both'' moves are an InvulnerableAttack. While some opponents can use attacks that will hit Dracula out of Mist Form, just about all of these attacks are extremely telegraphed and/or easy to avoid with a simple jump or dodge.

** Also worth mentioning is the Rune Sword. It's a huge sword with high attack power that, instead of being swung, ''flings itself'' in front of you to a distance of half a screen away and then flies back to you. You can easily strike enemies that are dangerous to get close to or are on the other side of a wall.

** The majority of Souls in ''Aria of Sorrow'' are pretty powerful, actually: a good example is the Red Minotaur Soul, which summons an axe so big that swinging it clears the entire screen, doing ridiculous damage and killing bosses in a few attacks. So the true GameBreaker of ''Aria of Sorrow'' has got to be the Chaos Ring, which lets you spam Souls without using any MP.

** The Mantle soul, which has the property of swapping HP and MP, can one hit kill many enemies, and costs a mere pittance in MP.

** The positron rifle from the boss rush mode deserves mention. It hits nearly as hard as the Solais and it multi-hits enemies. It also has the longest range of any weapon, and combined with the Succubus soul, you can decimate any grounded or large enemy without taking a single hit and heal a lot of HP.

* Portrait of Ruin has another massive gamebreaker in the inventory, where tapping the stylus at a certain place will always select a potion and allow you to use it... even if you don't even ''have'' a potion, so you can at any time use any amount of potions at will. This makes everything even more trivial, as any damage taken can always be instantly fully recovered. With proper usage of potions it's nearly impossible to die.

* In ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaLordsOfShadow2'' most of the first game's more degenerate nonsense was nerfed, but Exploding Quake (the dark magic companion to Holy Cross which nobody used because it wasn't as broken as Holy Cross) was not touched, and the Flame Claws power can easily deal with just about any non-boss enemy, doing around 266 damage per hit across a huge arc at full Mastery.
** On the Void Sword's side, the Whirlwind move. Comes out fast, ignores the "do virtually no damage" theme of most Void Sword attacks, deals multiple hits that stagger large enemies and juggle small ones, and since it's a Void Sword attack it also heals Dracula. A decently-aimed Whirlwind can restore Dracula's entire health bar.

** The Ensnared Demon powerup is also broken; it puts Dracula in the same infinite-magic state as during the previous game's Satan battle (the bars decrease with use but refill almost instantly). Combined with Flame Claws or Exploding Quake it can absolutely wreck a boss.

* Richter's "Hydro Storm" is incredibly broken, vastly overpowering, allowing you to beat every boss except [[ThatOneBoss Galamoth]] with no real effort.effortlessly.

* Richter's "Hydro Storm" is vastly overpowering, allowing you to beat every boss except [[ThatOneBoss Galamoth]] effortlessly.

* Maria on the Saturn port. You can beat the whole game and every boss without taking any damage and in record time if you don't mind abusing her invincibility spell. Even without that spell, she still kills every boss in seconds, probably a minute for Galamoth. Only Alucard beats her in a speed kill against Galamoth and a few other bosses.

* ''[[VideoGame/CastlevaniaChroniclesOfSorrow Dawn of Sorrow]]'' has the Mandragora soul. It simply sends a screaming mandragora out for 30 MP. The range is insane, the damage is very good for such a cheap costing soul, and while a little grinding may be needed for it, you can get it as soon as you get into the Garden of Madness. The somewhat rarer and later Great Axe Armour soul costs more and is only a little more powerful, but the range is massive, similar to the Red Minotaur soul but less effectib.
** There's also the Devil soul, which gives you a huge Strength stat boost in exchange for doing 10 HP of damage each second. The Devil soul is also very easy to get, appearing fairly early in the game. Using it in combination with the Valmanway (see "Crissaegrim" under ''Symphony'', because being dominant in just one game apparently wasn't enough), it can beat the game's Boss Rush mode in just over 4 minutes (taking into account the long waiting times to gather the healing orb after every battle).

* Hector can be quite great too if you're prone to experimenting with weapons. Using the replica of Isaac's spear against him in the second battle is almost unfair because your combo is faster than his recovery, and if you keep hitting him from behind (FoeYay abounds with those two), you can get him stuck in perpetual recovery stagger until he switches modes, or until one of the [=IDs=] lambasts you.